SYNOPSIS
In this workshop, we will emphasize how to serve the text and author with both clarity and feeling. This means that we will focus on the construction of the text: finding the operative words; linking ideas from one paragraph to the next; finding a tone, and a point of view for the third person narrator (different from the tone/attitudes of the characters). We will see how the author’s use of language, and the rhythm of the prose, can guide us as we interpret, orally, the author’s written intention.
Also present will be some brief, but powerful, lessons from the Feldenkrais Method that will reduce fatigue, and increase comfort during long narration sessions.
This workshop will end at 8:30 p.m.
INSTRUCTOR BIO
Suzanne Toren
Suzanne is a New York-based professional actor who, over the past 40 years, has worked on and off Broadway and in regional theatres around the country, performing in the classics, as well as originating roles in new plays.
She is a multi-award winning narrator of close to 1000 audio books; awards include Narrator of the Year (for Library of Congress Talking Book program) and Best Voices of 2009 (from Audiofile Magazine). From time to time, she also works as a director of audio books.
For 19 years, until its closing, Suzanne was on the faculty of the New Actors Workshop,( a professional actor-training program founded by Mike Nichols, Paul Sills and George Morrison), where, as a Guild-certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method, she taught this work to aspiring actors.
Currently, in addition to her own work as an actor (both on stage and behind a microphone), Suzanne teaches weekly classes in the Feldenkrais Method, and ,occasionally, workshops in audio book narration.
REQUIREMENTS
Please bring a short audiobook narration piece of 2 to 3 pages that you feel you could be cast for. Also, bring the opening paragraph (1st paragraph on the 1st page) of the piece of fiction / non-fiction you will be reading. If this is not included in your initial 2 to 3 page selection, then provide it separately. Please make TWO (2) copies of these materials: one for yourself and one for the instructor.
